A woman gave her husband the fright of his life by turning up to her own funeral - after he had arranged to have her killed.

Balenga Kalala, of Melbourne, paid a team of hitmen £3,500 to take out his wife Noela Rukundo because he thought she was cheating on him.

Kalala, who has lived in Australia since arriving as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004, planned to have the mother of his three children murdered as she attended her stepmother’s funeral in Burundi early last year.

But the gunmen didn’t want to kill a woman and knew Ms Rukundo’s brother, so they told her what her husband had done - and even handed over recorded phone conversations and a payment receipt for the blood money.

The hitmen then told Kalala the deed was done, and he informed the family she died in an accident in Africa.